Ingram Collection of Modern British Art


The Ingram Collection of Modern British Art is one of the United Kingdom’s best and most significant collections of Modern British art. It is recognised as the biggest privately owned publicly accessible collection of Modern British in the country. The collection has been put together over the last decade by media entrepreneur Chris Ingram. Ingram has been described as “one of the most active and thoughtful collectors of Modern British Art today.”
Robert Upstone considers the collection to have been "created with exemplary visual flair and an unerring eye for quality". The collection comprises 650 artworks of which over 400 are by the most important artists of the Modern British era, among these Dame Elisabeth Frink, Dame Barbara Hepworth and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi.

The collection

The collection is currently housed at The Lightbox - the Art Fund Prize-winning gallery and museum in Ingram's hometown of Woking. The Lightbox is a public gallery which opened in 2007. The Ingram Collection has been on loan to the gallery from its opening and has created a unique local opportunity to see world-class Modern British art. Since its inaugural exhibition, 2D:3D, which featured a wide selection of sculpture and sculptors' drawings, The Ingram Collection has run a varied programme of exhibitions focusing on particular elements of the collection, from surveys of artists such as Sir Anthony Caro and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, to explorations of broader themes such as The Human Face, Sea Pictures, and Dreams and Nightmares. Works from the collection are also regularly requested by other galleries and exhibitions, including loans to Pallant House, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Guildford Cathedral, The Hepworth Wakefield, Kettle’s Yard and the Jerwood Gallery.
The collection spans a hundred years of British art and includes works in oil and on paper, sculptures, installations and videos. The main focus of the collection is on the art movements which developed in the early and middle decades of the 20th Century, art which responded to the influence of the two world wars, and art which challenged the usual and the regular. The collection features a broad base of artists with particularly strong groups of works by William Roberts, Edward Burra, Keith Vaughan, John Tunnard, John Craxton, and Richard Eurich. The sculpture holdings are significant, featuring works by artists such as, amongst others, Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Geoffrey Clarke, Robert Clatworthy, Sir Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill, Bernard Meadows, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull and Leon Underwood.
The Ingram Collection also includes contemporary art. Ingram is a supporter of and regular visitor to graduate arts shows. Contemporary works purchased range from traditional works in oils and on paper, to installations and video. Several of the artists represented in the collection are now gaining international reputations, Haroon Mirza, Suki Chan and Alexander Hoda.

Exhibitions